Summary
The authors compiled fishing effort data from a nearly 20 year period across 18 different longline, gillnet and purse seine fisheries in the eastern Pacific Ocean in order to assess/model vulnerability of leatherback sea turtles to fishing impacts under 70 different conservation management measure (CMM) scenarios. To do this, a new ecological risk assessment approach, the Ecological Assessment for the Sustainable Impacts of Fisheries (EASI-Fish), was used. The CMMs of large circle hooks, finfish bait, and best handling and release practices each decreased vulnerability, but the most effective scenarios used all three measures together. EASI-phish was used as the ecological risk assessment.